I worked at Stirling University for 13 years. I was bullied by my manager, Kathy McCabe. I asked her to stop, but the ill treatment continued, and I raised grievances against her. As a result I was dismissed. Stirling University claims to be committed to allowing employees and students to be able to work and study free from bullying, victimisation and discrimination. However, here I provide evidence of the extreme lengths that management takes to protect and support bullies.

Tuesday

Stirling University commits fraud - details

As described in an earlier post, Stirling Uni committed fraud to pervert the course of justice by inventing a fake investigation for the grievance process that was supposed to handle my grievance against Kathy McCabe. It was obvious all along that there couldn't possibly have been a proper investigation, because I had written six pages of factual allegations against Kathy, and had included ample documentary evidence to support those allegations.

In their response to my claim to the Employment Tribunal, Stirling Uni claimed that my allegations had been investigated and rejected.. So I asked them to provide the details of that investigation, including the form the investigation took, the findings, and the conclusion for each allegation.

Stirling Uni strongly objected to having to provide the details, but if a genuine investigation had taken place, then they would surely already have the details recorded. After five months, they eventually agreed to supply the details. If the information already existed, it shouldn't have taken any more than an hour to create the document, but it took them several weeks to produce them. That was because they were having to invent an investigation.

The document they produced contains ten pages of small font text. None of it is referred to in Eileen Schofield's report that she produced when announcing her decision in March 2010. Why would she carry out all of this investigation, and not refer to it in order to justify her decision? The answer is that there was no investigation, and the document is a fraud, and it describes a fake investigation that was invented for the purposes of the tribunal.

Firstly, the document was produced, not by Eileen Schofield, but by Karen Stark, yet it attempts to describe how Eileen came to her decision for each allegation, but as we are about to see, that is impossible.

Here is a brief excerpt from the first page of that document.

This refers to the first allegation in my grievance, which was that Kathy allowed my colleagues to abuse me, and took no action to stop it. The example I gave was of Jackie O'Neil coming into my office demanding that I fix an error in the database. I looked at the problem, and I could see straight away (just as she should have) that the problem wasn't with the database, but with what she was attempting to do to the database. I offered her three methods to solve her problem, but she just shouted at me, slammed my door, went back to her office that she shared with several other programmers in a rage, phoned the software suppliers, and angrily described me as "our useless DBA".

I informed Kathy of this, but she just said "I'm not interested". In the presence of several witnesses, including Karen Stark, she confirmed that she told me that she wasn't interested.

So my allegation, which was against Kathy McCabe, didn't require Jackie O'Neil to be interviewed. They only interviewed her to cause trouble between us. Kathy McCabe was not even asked to respond to my allegation, so it is unclear how Eileen could possibly come to any conclusion about it. This excerpt is the university's attempt to describe that investigation.

The document states that this allegation was investigated between 5 - 24 March 2010. That is impossible. It's a lie.

It says that Karen and Eileen referred to statements made by Jackie O'Neil and Bruce Flockhart. Again, that is impossible.

It states that Jackie could not recall the incident, when in fact Jackie had stated that the allegation was absolutely untrue.

It then states that Bruce Flockhart recalled the incident. However, Bruce was not asked about this incident, and his statement does not refer to it. The only question that Bruce had been asked was why he left the university (which was completely irrelevant to the grievance process). So there was no reason for them to refer to his statement about this allegation. It's a lie.

It then states that (presumably due to Bruce's evidence on this issue - which he didn't give), my allegation (which was against Kathy McCabe) was upheld, but for some reason, it was considered not to be material.

Now obviously, this is a pile of shite, but this is genuinely how Stirling University claimed Eileen Schofield arrived at her decision by 24 March 2010. It's all lies!

Unknown to me, Bruce Flockhart emailed Karen Stark on 15 April 2010 (three weeks after Eileen Schofield produced her report). He said that he witnessed this incident. His description matches word for word what is included in the excerpt. It is simply impossible that Eileen Schofield could have come to the conclusion that the document says that she did on 24 March 2010.

So how can a document that purports to be the details of an investigation that took place between 5 - 24 March 2010 refer to a document that didn't exist until three weeks later, and how could that document have influenced Eileen Schofield's decision that she made before it existed?

At the tribunal, Karen Stark took full responsibility for this, and said that it was a mistake. She said that she was looking through the evidence and she saw Bruce's email attached to his original statement. But why would Karen be rummaging through statements in April 2011, a year after the decision had been made by Eileen Schofield? If the decision was made by Eileen, then surely Eileen should have completed the document and described how she arrived at her decision. How can Karen describe how Eileen came to her decision by rummaging through old statements?

So what was the mistake?

Well it's simply not a mistake. It's fraud. This was Karen's attempt to describe an investigation that didn't take place, but that was to justify a decision that wasn't based on evidence at all, but just a cover up. I'm not even sure who made the decision; Eileen, Karen or someone else?

The claim that this is simply a mistake is ridiculous. It would have to be a series of incredible mistakes. Lets examine the scenario.

Karen Stark decides to rummage through statements in April 2011 instead of simply asking Eileen Schofield how she reached her decision.

If this "investigation" had taken place, Eileen would already have those decisions. Otherwise there would have been no point in the investigation. Or are we supposed to believe that they had the investigation, but that Eileen didn't record her decisions on what they were investigating?

Karen reads Bruce's email and says that Eileen used it to come to her decision.

She says that Eileen decided to uphold my allegation, and that can only be based on Bruce's email.

It can't be a mistake because it describes a decision process. A decision that, if we are to believe Karen, could only have been made by Karen herself.

Karen says that the outcome was also recorded incorrectly, and that it should have read "Allegation not upheld" instead of "Allegation upheld - but considered not to be material". That would have to be the most astonishing typing error I've ever heard of. But it's not. It's a decision that could only have been made, if we are to believe Karen, by Karen herself. How could Karen possibly decide whether an allegation was material or not without referring to Eileen?

If an allegation had been considered "not material" then what would have been the point in investigating it? You would simply say "Not investigated because not considered material".

How can this ten page document include a conclusion for each allegation without Karen having referred to Eileen?

Why is it not material? If it was not material to me, I wouldn't have included it in my grievance.

It is a manager's role to ensure that their staff conduct themselves in a professional manner. Yet Kathy openly and proudly admitted to telling me that she wasn't interested. However, she was very interested in any gossip she heard about me, and would criticise me, including formal criticism in my appraisal report, based on gossip she told me she overheard in the corridor, without even telling what it was that she had heard.

There was no valid reason to interview Jackie about this. Jackie should have been spoken to by her manager at the time of the incident, which was more than three years old.

The grievance process was a complete sham, but the attempt to cover up that sham is a fraud. Gerry McCormac was in charge of Stirling University at the time the fraud took place, and therefore he is responsible for it.